Ryan Ruby has written something unprecedented: an epic poem about poetry itself, tracing the social position of poets from Bronze Age bards to today's MFA programs and Silicon Valley boardrooms. Written in blank verse with mock-academic footnotes, 'Context Collapse' borrows its title from media studies to describe what happens when messages meant for one audience reach another. Ruby charts how poets have been prophets, entertainers, courtiers, criminals, revolutionaries, critics, scholars, and finally nobodies. The poem incorporates insights from sociology, economics, cybersemiotics, and media theory into its iambic pentameter, examining the always delicate relationship between poets, publishers, and audiences. Ruby argues that poetic innovations have repeatedly prefigured broader social transformations, from the printing press to social media. The verse essay is cheekily learned, citing everyone from Shelley to Marshall McLuhan, while maintaining genuine poetic momentum. Ruby, a literary critic and novelist, brings both scholarly rigor and creative verve to this unusual project. The result is simultaneously a history of literature, a work of media criticism, and a meditation on what it means to be a poet when poetry has lost its cultural centrality. It's a book that only a true believer in poetry's importance could have written.